S1 If you’re studying at Birmingham there’s lots of musical opportunities. Within the University there's the choirs and the orchestras and sort of the more formal way to get involved in music if you play an instrument. There's also Guild clubs and societies that are music based and there’s African drumming, there’s a jazz and blues society, there’s the University musical group, which is again more formal but jazz and blues are a great example because they’ll have jamming sessions; so anyone who’s interested in music can come along and just either listen or take part and strum their guitar. So I think the best thing is there’s lots of ways to get involved. You can get involved just on a sort of listening, participation way, there's RockSoc who obviously run their own musical events and things like that but there’s always ways that if you do play an instrument and you’re particularly talented then you can get involved as well.

S2 I was involved in the African Drumming Society last year. We learnt how to play drums, we got people coming in from Zimbabwe, from South Africa, showing us how to play drums according to their society and we also got involved in events and organisations with the University so we helped with the international students, we helped with a Black History [month – 1.21] last year as well, which was really good.

S3 Basically I’ve been interested in DJ’ing for quite some time and it was just a case of me researching to find the student radio station, which is Birmingham FM and at the time I was doing that, basically they were recruiting and kind of getting people involved in the second semester’s scheduling period so from doing that I managed to get a spot at seven o’clock on Sundays to do a jazz show. I called it ‘Excursions’ where I played jazz, funk and soul music from back in the 1960s and 1970s to kind of get people exposed to a genre of music that’s not very well documented and not a lot of people have heard of it.

S4 The way I got involved in Music at Birmingham, in sixth form and in school before that, I did a lot of music, I did a lot of tours, I played a lot and I wanted to kind of continue that into my university education as well. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do loads because of my course but I could take out bits and kind of fit it around me. So the University Music Society is one of the most active societies in the University at the minute and basically they represent all the major choirs, all the orchestras so they do a lot of their own productions; so it’s a really good way in and getting involved and then you can just kind of pick out what you want to do. So I did the choir last year and I went in the orchestra and fitted in with that and it’s just a really good opportunity of playing some pretty big venues as well if you haven’t done like big events before where you’ve got something like City Hall and all those kind of well-recognised places. It’s a really good way of making new friends, meeting new people with similar interests and you can kind of build on what you’ve learnt at school.